Chapter 2: The Pirate Planet

My head feels like it’s full of fuzz. What happened?

“Ugh...”

“Rekka, are you awake?”

“Rosalind? Aagh... I can’t even remember how many times I’ve passed out like this.”

It wasn’t something I tried to keep track of. It would just be a reminder of how many times I’d almost gotten myself killed.

Either way, I came to in a cramped tunnel of some kind. I squinted and saw we were just inside the entrance of a big pipe... maybe to one of the canals? To my left, I could see the water running down the pipe deeper into darkness, and to my right, I could see lights from the moats of Ryugu Palace.

“Where are we?”

“Probably the pipe that circulates water in and out of the moat.”

“What happened to Rain and the big guy?”

“I don’t know.”

“...I see.”

I sat up. I must’ve hit the water when I landed. My whole body hurt, and I was soaking wet. Rosalind said she’d left Rain behind... But she’d done it to save me, so I couldn’t really blame her for that.

“Hey, where’s that pirate girl? She fell down with us, right?”

“She’s right there.”

Rosalind’s pale finger pointed to the girl with the headband, who was currently sitting with her legs crossed.

“Um, are you hurt?” I asked.

“...Hmph.”

She turned away. She didn’t seem to like me much.

“She’s not hurt, I don’t think. You shielded her from the fall. However...” Rosalind frowned and ripped the headband off the girl’s head. “She’s being quite a brat considering you saved her... Hmm?”

“G-Give that back!”

The girl reached out to try and take her headband back from Rosalind, but without it, there was a tiny horn visible on her head.

“Are you an oni or something?”

“An oni? What the heck is that? Just give me that back!”

“Hmph. If you were a fellow outsider like me, I was willing to show you some sympathy... But if you’re not, I suppose there’s no need to give this back.”

Rosalind pushed the girl away and sighed. I felt a little bad, so I spoke up.

“Rosalind, give it back to her.”

“Hmm... I will if she’s willing to answer some questions. Girl, what’s your name?”

“...Fam,” she answered unhappily.

“Fam, is it? And you’re with these Seageists? What are you pirates doing on this planet?”

“The same thing pirates always do,” Fam said bluntly.

“Of course... But some of what you’re doing doesn’t make sense. If you’re after money, why not rob the guests at the inn?”

“Now that you mention it, that’s a good question,” I said.

Ryugu Palace was the priciest inn on Berano. Most of its guests were probably rich, so if the pirates were just after money, they’d be easy targets. But as far as I could tell, the pirates were leaving the patrons alone. So they must have been after...

“You’re after that jewel called the Mermaid Princess’s Tear, aren’t you? It just looked like an ordinary gem when I saw it. Why is it so valuable?”

“It’s supposed to be some kind of ancient merfolk treasure,” a new voice suddenly answered.

I turned around and saw someone I recognized coming from deeper within the pipe.

“Raul!”

“Hey, kid,” Raul answered with a grin.

“You show up in the strangest places, don’t you?” Rosalind said in an exasperated whisper.

“So you know about this Mermaid Princess’s Tear?”

“Hmm... I suppose the answer is both yes and no, depending on how you see it.”

“That tells me nothing. What do you mean?”

Raul shrugged. “Like I said, it’s supposedly some ancient merfolk treasure. When you’re in my line of work, you hear about things like that. The rumors say it’s hidden in Ryugu Palace, but not a single person’s ever seen it. The most common version of the story says that it’s an incredibly valuable jewel.”

“The treasure of the merfolk, huh?”

The Mermaid Princess’s Tear(?) that the big man had been holding definitely looked like a jewel, and I could definitely see pirates going after something like that... probably. The only catch was that if they were after treasure—money, really—then why not attack the guests while they were at it?

“That doesn’t make sense,” Rosalind said. “The Mermaid Princess’s Tear must have some other secret.”

It seemed like we were on the same page about that.

“...Oww!”

Huh? Suddenly my head started hurting.

“What’s wrong, Rekka—gah!”

“Oww... What is this?”

Rosalind and Raul both began to clutch their foreheads in pain, too.

“Aah! You! Tiny girl! Give me back my headband!” Fam started to shout when she saw us in pain.

“Hm? Hey, don’t tell me that kid’s a gremlin...”

“A gremlin?”

“What’s that?”

Neither me or Rosalind had any idea what Raul was talking about.

“Just give her back the headband. It’s her horn that’s causing these headaches.”

“Hmph.”

Rosalind scoffed and forced the headband back on Fam’s head. Fam adjusted it so it covered the horn, and my headache stopped instantly.

“The pain’s gone... Raul, what the heck was that? And what’s a gremlin?”

“A rare species that gives off special electromagnetic waves from its horn. They can screw up delicate machinery or interfere with the brain’s electrical signals, which causes headaches. It’s not something gremlins can control, though. That’s just how they are, so cut her some slack.”

Raul put his hand on Fam’s head, but she slapped it away and told him not to touch her.

“Wait, did you call me ‘tiny girl’ a minute ago?” Rosalind asked.

“You are tiny,” Fam said.

“I’m the same size as you are!”

The two tiny girls proceeded to shout at each other.

“Guys, now’s not the time for... Wait. Raul, did you cut your hand?”

“Oh?”

Blood was dripping from a long cut across Raul’s hand where Fam had slapped it.

“It’s fine. It’s not deep... Look.”

Raul rubbed his palms together to wipe the blood away, then spread them out to show that the wound had totally disappeared.

“Huh? You’re right...”

It sure looked like it was a lot of blood, but there was no sign of it now. The cut really was gone. As I tried to figure out what had happened, Fam began to kick her legs and stomp her feet.

“Let me go already!” she yelled.

“Nwah!”

Spit flew from her mouth and landed on Rosalind. I could see Rosalind’s temples begin to twitch.

“You really are a little brat. Everybody knows that when you catch a pirate, they go straight to the noose.”

“...!”

Fam’s expression froze up when she heard the word “noose,” but only for a second. The next moment, she was glaring at us. Maybe she was just bluffing, but she was pretty strong-willed.

“Come on, Rosalind. Don’t scare her.”

“I wasn’t kidding... Oh?”

“Hm?”

Rosalind looked up out of the pipe towards the front gate of Ryugu Palace.

“The pirates are starting to withdraw...” I said.

“They’ve got what they’re after, so they probably want to get out of here before the army arrives.”

“No! Boss!” Fam screamed.

“Looks like you’ve been left behind,” Rosalind said with a grin.

For the first time, the pirate girl went pale.

When I looked out of the pipe again, I saw her “boss” come out of the palace. What was that he was carrying over his shoulders?

“Rain! Tetra! And Shirley? How?! They were supposed to be hiding in the room!”

The three girls were all motionless.

“Damn it! He can’t...”

“Calm down, Rekka. No pirate takes dead bodies back with them. They’re just unconscious.”

“But then why take them?!”

“He either wants hostages in case someone comes after him, or he wants to sell them to slavers. Either way, it’s nothing good.”

“The boss would never do that!” Fam yelled.

She was pretty insistent, but we had no way of knowing if it was the truth or not.

“Hmm... Seems you’ve just been caught up in Rain’s story. Looks like the kidnapped princess type.”

I know that, R! You don’t have to tell me!

No, even if Rain wasn’t a heroine, it was still my job to save her. And of course Tetra and Shirley, too!

“I want to get them back. Rosalind, will you help me once more?”

“Hmph... Well, I should’ve guessed that you would ask that.”

I figured I could take that as a yes.

“So, what’s the plan? Attack head-on and get them back?”

“No. If they use Tetra and the others as hostages, we’ll be in danger, and so will they. We’ll follow them and wait for our chance.”

Raul interrupted us before we could get any further with our plan.

“Don’t tell me you’re thinking of sneaking aboard the Seageists’ pirate ship. That’s insane.”

“Are they that dangerous?”

“They sure are. They used to raid Galactic Federation merchant ships all the time. They’re a real nasty bunch.”

Fam frowned. Even if they were pirates, she clearly didn’t like someone talking about her friends that way.

“For the last year or so, they’ve even been raiding military supply ships. They hired some kind of amazing cybernetic engineer to upgrade all their weapons, I heard. The federation sent a task force after them and ended up taking heavy losses, which means they’re no normal pirates. And what’s more...” Raul lowered his voice. “I’ve heard rumors that the captain, Squallow, kidnaps kids and eats them.”

“He eats kids...?”

Images of Tetra, Shirley, and Rain flashed through my mind.

“My boss would never...”

“Shut up,” Rosalind said.

“Grmph!”

Fam tried to talk, but Rosalind put her hand over her mouth.

“See? So chasing after the likes of them is a bad idea.”

“But I don’t buy the whole him eating kids thing. Especially now with Fam right here.”

Fam was a pirate, but she was young enough that you could call her a kid. If that huge man—Squallow, Raul said—really ate kids, then he probably would have eaten her first.

“Well, maybe that part’s not true,” Raul said. “But he’s definitely kidnapping them. You just saw him nab your friends, right? The Seageists are bad news.”

“That’s why we’re going to save them.”

Tetra had been with me for a while now, and Rain and Shirley had both been great to me here on this planet. We were all friends. If the people who’d kidnapped them really were dangerous, then it was all the more reason to save them.

“You really are stubborn, you know that?” Raul said, shaking his head. “I know you care about them, but why not let the Estashionian army handle the baddies?”

“You’re the one who said they weren’t ordinary pirates. They took out almost an entire fleet, right? If we leave now, we can catch up to them. I’m going.”

“Kid, that’s not what I was trying to say...” Raul scratched his head.

“I don’t have any more time to waste here. Rosalind, let’s g—”

“Hold it! If you’re really going, then I’m going with you.”

“Huh? Why?”

“Hmm... Well, I guess I feel like I’ve come so far that I can’t just give up on you now.” Raul gave me a particularly suspect grin and a thumbs-up.

I really didn’t know what to do with this guy...

“Fine. Let’s get going then.”

“Wait, Rekka. We’re heading into enemy territory. We need to do this as safely as possible,” Rosalind said.

“And how are we going to do that?”

Rosalind’s lips curled up into a smile, revealing her vampire fangs.

“Simple. This.”

Her eyes flashed a strange shade of red as she looked down at Fam.

“Now, look into my eyes...”

“Mggh, mggh...”

She was using her vampire charm power, which could put her victim under a powerful kind of hypnosis.

“...There.”

“Are you done?”

“Yeah. I kept it simple: she can’t lie to us, and she can’t disobey us.”

“Ugh... What did you do?” Fam groaned, blinking her eyes repeatedly.

“You left her mind intact, right?” I asked.

“Powerful charm spells sap my strength. We don’t know what’s ahead of us, so it’s best to conserve my power. I guess it wouldn’t hurt to make sure it’s working, though. Bark.”

“Woof! H-Huh?!”

Fam was shocked to find herself obeying Rosalind. In my case, my entire mind had been warped to justify obeying the charm spell, but it seemed to be different with Fam. Rosalind must have used a weaker, more energy-efficient version on her.

“Seems like it worked fine. All right, little girl, lead us to your pirate ship.”

And so Fam began to take us to where her crew was.

“Huh? We’re not heading for the entrance gate?”

I’d thought the only way in and out of the undersea dome was through the gate, but come to think of it, how had the pirates broken in in the first place? If they’d tried to force their way in by breaking through the dome, the pressure collapse would’ve crushed us all. Including them.

“Fam, how did the pirates get into the undersea dome?”

“We used pressurized miniature spaceships to come in through a water duct.”

“A water duct?”

“All the water that’s used here in the city is filtered and sent back into the sea. But those ducts aren’t supposed to open from the outside...” Raul said, confused.

“How did you guys get it open then, Fam?”

“I don’t know,” she said as she looked away.

Since she was under the effect of Rosalind’s charm spell, she must really not have known. The mystery remained, but it seemed like the pirates were headed back for the duct. We followed them into the underground water system. When we got to the ducts near the edge of the dome, we found four small pirate ships that must have been what they used to get inside.

“Fam, do you know which of those Squallow is on?”

The girls were probably wherever he was.

“We came in with five ships. The boss must already be back at the main ship.”

“Hmm...”

Then that meant we’d have to make it to their flagship.

“We might be able to have the girl come up with some excuse to get us on one of the little ships,” Rosalind said. “But if any of the people we defeated at Ryugu Palace are on board, we’ll have problems.”

“That’s true. They’ve seen our faces.”

Was there any way to keep them from recognizing us? Hmm...

“I know. Can’t we have Raul disguise us?”

“Oh, hmm... Yeah, I guess.”

Raul must have still been a little iffy about coming with us because his answer was mumbled and hesitant. But since he’d already demonstrated his disguise skills for us, I wasn’t letting him out of this one.

“All right, get to work then,” I said.

“...Sure thing.”

Raul put some kind of makeup on us. He then ripped our clothes here and there, adding water and mud to make us look more like pirates.

“I wore this new outfit just for today, too...” Rosalind whispered ruefully.

“Hmm, what else? We could add some grimy capes and bandanas to make you look more like Fam, I guess. They’d help hide your faces, too.”

Raul took a small scrap of fabric out of his pocket. With a flick of the wrist, it grew to hundreds of times its original size until it became a cape like a gunslinger out of the Old West might have worn.

“W-Wow, that’s one heck of a magic trick.”

“Nah, this is just something I bought at the store. The mermaids use something similar to fold up their pants when they want to use their fins.”

No joke, space technology is out of this world.

We spent a couple of minutes getting into disguise, then my cell phone began to ring in my pocket. It was Iris. I suddenly remembered that she’d modified her phone so that she could call me anywhere in the universe. (Though I couldn’t call her back.)

“Hello? Sorry, but I need you to talk in a whisper.”

“Rekka... Where are you?” The voice on the other end of the line sounded nervous. “Tetra and Shirley went to the bathroom and haven’t come back. Hibiki and I searched the third floor, but we can’t find them! And then...!”

“Calm down, Iris.”

She was starting to freak out, so I gave her a second to chill before getting her up to speed.

“We’re about to board a pirate ship.”

“Then I’ll go, too!”

“Sorry, but there’s no time.”

There was now only one ship that hadn’t left yet. There was no time to wait for everybody else.

“Iris, I want you to go help the injured.”

“...Fine. Be careful. And make sure you come back safe, okay?”

“Yeah, leave it to me.”

I hung up and put the phone back in my pocket.

“Okay, let’s go.”

“Very well. All right, girl. Come up with some story to feed them to keep them from suspecting us.”

“All right.” Fam nodded unhappily.

We followed her up to the entrance of the ship. One of the pirates saw Fam and looked at us suspiciously.

“Hm? Is that you, Fam? Who are those people with you?”

“The kids are street orphans. The old guy’s a drifter, he says. They want to come with us, so I brought them.”

“...I see. Then get them on board quick.”

The man seemed to find nothing particularly unusual about what Fam said. He let us on without any more questions.

I raised an eyebrow at this development. Rosalind had told Fam to come up with a lie that wouldn’t sound suspicious, and she apparently had done so admirably. But...

“Hey, is it normal for pirates to let drifters and orphans on their ship?” I whispered to Rosalind.

“Well, most outlaws get their start because they’ve run out of food to eat. And sometimes people with nowhere else to go gang up and form groups of bandits or pirates.”

Really? I thought pirates were just, you know, bad guys. People who wanted the chance to hurt others. Of course, some of them probably were, but maybe some weren’t? Based on how nonchalantly the guy who let us in responded to Fam’s story, the Seageists must have been in the habit of taking in people who had nowhere else to go. They were still pirates, though...

When the rest of the crew boarded the ship, we took off. We escaped through the ducts out to the sea, and then we went to the surface. Without the drag from the water, we accelerated and began to climb higher and higher into the air. I looked out the window and saw a huge space battleship in the skies of Berano, far larger than the one I was inside right now.

“So, that’s the Seageists’ ship?”

“It’s sizable, isn’t it?” Rosalind said as she looked up at it, too. “You’d need a crew of 500 to man that thing.”

Raul leaned forward and rested his chin on the top of my head.

“Nah,” he casually said. “Ships of that class all have an autopilot. As long as you’ve got 50 people on the main bridge, you can run it just fine.”

“Wow, that’s amazing. And get off my head!”

“Gyah! Oww!”

Raul bit his tongue when I jerked my head upwards, leaving him squirming in pain.

After that, once we were safely aboard the main ship, we hid ourselves in Fam’s room in the crew block.

“Damn it! I can’t believe they just let people like you on!”

As soon as we got inside and shut the door, Fam started screaming and dropped to the floor.

“Hey, is the charm still working?”

“If there’s nobody around, she can talk freely. It doesn’t go against my orders not to disobey us,” Rosalind said as she lay down on the room’s bed.

“Oh, right. Where is this ship heading?”

“Planet Gail. Our home. It’ll take about two hours at high-speed warp... Gah! Why won’t my mouth stop talking?!” Fam yanked at the corners of her lips.

“Hmm. Now that we know where their base is, can we get the Estashionians to destroy the pirates for us?”

Raul shrugged.

“The reason the Seageists have never been caught, at least if you believe the rumors, is that no one has ever been able to track their ship in warp space.”

“I see. And why is that, girl?”

“The space around Gail has a disturbed magnetic field. Normal spaceships can’t warp through it. Our ship has a special coating, so we can... Jeez!”

Fam started to pound at her head with her fists, but Rosalind paid her antics no mind.

“So, you need some kind of ‘coating,’ whatever that is. I guess we won’t be able to count on reinforcements there. When we leave, we’ll need to steal an enemy ship then.”

“Okay! You just leave finding a ship for the trip home to me,” Raul said.

“Yes, it’s the perfect job for a sneak thief like you.”

As we discussed things, a voice came over the PA system announcing that we were soon entering warp. Warp space was a one-way trip. Even if we saved the other girls now, we wouldn’t be able to escape. We’d have to make our move once we landed at the pirate base. Our job now was to sneak onto planet Gail, get back the girls, and then steal a ship to get out of there.

“They said it would take two hours to warp, didn’t they? Rekka, you should get some rest,” Rosalind said. “You need to conserve your strength.”

“Yeah.”

I borrowed half the bed so that I could lie down, too. Raul came over, as well, but Rosalind kicked him away. Fam was still on the floor pounding at her head.

Tetra, Rain, Shirley... Please be safe.

▽

When we came out of warp, the pirate ship had arrived at planet Gail. If Berano was a blue planet, Gail was a brown one. Almost the entire surface looked like it was nothing but dust and dirt. There was barely any ocean, but for some reason, the land around that tiny sliver of blue was silver.

“What’s that silver area?”

“Probably what’s left over from a terraforming process. That’s when you artificially change the environment, mostly so that people can live somewhere they normally couldn’t.”

I remembered hearing about something like that to make it possible for humans to live on the moon or Mars one day. With how advanced space technology was, I could believe they’d figured it out already.

The pirate ship landed in a terraformed residential zone, touching down in the water next to what looked like a port.

“Wait, why are we at a port?” Raul asked.

“What kind of question is that? Isn’t that what ships do?”

“Sure, but not spaceships. Can’t you see that building over there that looks like the main dock?”

Raul pointed out the window. I could see a huge building the size of a small mountain.

“That’s normally the kind of place you’d dock one of these, especially when you’ve been off-planet and need maintenance. Is there some reason we didn’t go there, Fam?”

“They’re making a new ship at the factory dock, so this ship can’t fit there... Ngwah!”

It must be tough to be under the control of a charm and not know it.

“How strange. I don’t know much about spaceships, but this one seems quite nice to me,” Rosalind said. “Do you need more firepower?”

“I don’t know. About a year ago, the boss suddenly started talking about building it.” Fam had an unhappy look on her face that had nothing to do with the charm.

There was no point in hanging around, so we decided to make a move. Of course, we didn’t forget our disguises. After asking around a little, we found that Squallow and the girls had gone to the huge facility Raul had pointed out. The locals just called it “the factory.” Apparently it wasn’t just a dock, but also a cybernetics and terraforming lab. In addition, it functioned as a command post for the pirates.

“Why would they take the girls someplace like that?” I asked.

“I couldn’t tell you,” Rosalind replied. “We’ll just have to go see.”

Since staying too close to the other pirates would restrict our options, we took a route to the factory that led us down a bunch of side streets. Fam had chosen (at Rosalind’s orders) a road lined on both sides with huge metal boxes. Were they prefab houses? Of course, they were probably made from different materials than what we used on Earth, but this seemed to be a residential area.

“I thought pirates lived on their ships. Or in caves or something.”

“You’ve got some weird ideas, you know that?” Raul said.

Sorry, I only know what I read in manga.

“You can tell from looking at it that this planet was abandoned after it went to rot. There aren’t many pirates who’d go through the trouble of terraforming a place like this. A hideout where you can’t be followed by warp is probably an enticing proposition, but even so...”

“Even so?”

“There are a lot of civilians here.”

“Now that you mention it...”

I realized that the only people I’d seen on this street looked very different than the pirates who’d attacked Berano. Many of them were women or children, and there were plenty of men that didn’t look like ruffians. But that wasn’t the only thing I realized. No, maybe I really did just have weird ideas about pirates. Maybe it was nothing from Rosalind and Raul’s perspectives, but...

We suddenly ran into trouble.

“Oh, it’s Big Sis Fam!”

Fam was walking out in front of the rest of us. The kids who saw her came running up to us.

“You’re back already?”

“Who are those people?”

We were instantly surrounded by children and had to stop.

“Get them off our backs, girl,” Rosalind ordered in a gruff whisper.

“Oh, um... They’re going to be new members of our family.”

“The old guy, too?”

“I’m not that old, kiddo.” Raul winked.

He didn’t seem particularly put off or flustered. He might’ve looked like a wimp, but he was quick on his feet and always on his game.

“Come on, say hello to your new family. Hello!” Fam motioned to the kids.

“Hello!” they all called out in a cheerful greeting to us.

“H-Hello,” I responded, a little stunned.

Rosalind had probably never even met a kid who was friendly to her. She looked absolutely astonished. I was, too, to tell the truth.

All the kids here on this planet were smiling. And it wasn’t just the kids. The adults and even the old people were all smiling, too. That was the biggest discrepancy I’d realized between this place and what I’d thought a pirate planet would be like.

Were these kids kidnapped like Raul had suggested? If so, why did they look so happy? There was a jarring difference between my image of the Seageists and the smiling faces I was seeing.

“Fam, who are these kids?”

“They’re orphans from all over the galaxy. Just like I was. I’d almost starved to death when the boss took me in.” Fam patted the head of one of the happy children. “The Seageists were originally space refugees. The boss brought them all together, but we had to turn to piracy to make sure everybody had enough food.”

“...”

Raul told me they kidnapped children. I had no idea that the truth was the exact opposite. They were helping children.

“That’s how most outlaws get their start.”

Rosalind didn’t seem shocked at all. Was that just the gap in life experience between us?

“We don’t attack the weak. We only take from fat pigs who have far more than they need. And it’s just so we can survive, not so we can have luxuries...”

“I have no interest whatsoever in whether you’re good or evil,” Rosalind said. She then turned to look at me. “Rekka, don’t you go getting sentimental, either. You’re not here to defeat evil or serve the cause of justice, are you? You’re here to save your friends.”

“...Yeah, that’s right.”

The only reason we were here was to save Tetra and the other girls. Nothing else.

“But I might need to rethink some things. That Squallow guy might not be so bad after all.”

“Listen, Rekka. I just told you not to get sentimental.”

“That’s not it. Listen to me.” I cut off Rosalind before she could repeat herself again. “If he was a real bad guy, he might kidnap people or hurt people in search of treasure. But maybe he’s not, right? So there might be some reason why he’s doing this.”

Kult Graphimore, for instance, was just after Hibiki to save his world. For a normally good person do evil things, there’s some reason behind it.

“Rekka might have a point,” Raul said. “I’m a good guy at heart, too, you know.”

“You just do everything on the spur of the moment.”

“Hahahaha.” He just laughed at me.

“Well, I can’t totally agree, but... how about it, girl? Do you have any idea why this ‘boss’ of yours attacked Berano, stole the Mermaid Princess’s Tear, and then kidnapped our comrades?”

“...No.” Fam tilted her head down a little as she answered, and then motioned for the kids to get going. “The boss changed about a year ago. Out of the blue, he started spending all this money on a new ship, and we started doing more raids to get the cash for it.”

“That doesn’t quite mesh with what you just told us.”

Rosalind pointed out earlier that the ship that attacked Berano was already plenty for their needs. It seemed odd that he’d take money they needed to feed people and use it for a ship that he didn’t need, especially when it meant doing extra work to pay for it.

“Did anything else change?”

“...The old boss would never have turned his blade on a kid,” Fam said with a glance in my direction.

I remembered how surprised she’d been when Squallow had attacked Rosalind. Maybe that was why she’d protected me from him when he came after me.

“I owe the boss my life.” Tears welled up in Fam’s eyes as she spoke. “The boss said he’d make us a real country on this planet. He even had plans to make the soil usable and start schools for the kids. He said that once we all had enough to be happy on our own, we could stop being pirates... And I wanted to help him! But he changed so suddenly... And the rest of the Seageists started acting all weird, too! Damn it! I don’t want to tell you this stuff!”

Fam was yelling, but she started to choke up. She had to stop to wipe away the tears. I didn’t like the idea of forcing her to tell us all this, but maybe it was for the best for her to say it out loud. It must have hurt to keep it inside.

“R...” I whispered.

She nodded and said, “Yup, you nailed it.”

For all her faults, R was quick on the uptake. She already knew that I was going to ask her whether or not Fam was a heroine.

“I see... I’m glad.”

“Glad?”

“Yeah.”

If Fam was a heroine, that meant that I could help her story. I put my hand on her head as she sobbed.

“Cry all you want. And once you’re done, let’s go see your boss. We can ask him why he attacked Berano and stole the Mermaid Princess’s Tear, and why he kidnapped my friends.”

“Huh... What’s gotten into you? Why would you want to know that?”